


Watching You Run

by shakespeareaddict



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: First Kiss, Getting Together, Holiday Gift Exchange, M/M, Stargazing (sort of), also a little fluff, lots of pining, mentioned Baggenshield - Freeform, right before the BofA so some angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 21:59:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13222083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakespeareaddict/pseuds/shakespeareaddict
Summary: Dwalin and Nori talk the night before the Battle of Five Armies, and work some things out.





	Watching You Run

**Author's Note:**

> My gift for veraverorum for the Nwalin Holiday Gift Exchange, who wanted stargazing or something based on the song "You Are A Runner and I Am My Father's Son" by Wolf Parade. This is mostly based on the song (the title is from it as well), but there is some stargazing. I hope you enjoy, and have a happy 2018!
> 
> (Brief world-building notes: I reference here "Thekir's Ax", "Orome the Hunter", and "Shabbathai". Thekir's Ax is a made-up alternate name for the real constellation Cetus, which I thought kind of looks like an ax, while Orome is supposed to be Orion. Shabbathai is the ancient Hebrew name for Saturn. Orome, in Middle-Earth mythos, is the Vala of Hunting, and Varda is the Queen of the Valar and the Vala of stars. I also headcanon Dwalin and Balin's mom as a Stiffbeard.)

Nori was shivering when Dwalin came up to the makeshift battlements. It was a cold night, the stars like shattered glass glinting on dark velvet and their breath misting into the air like Smaug's foul smoke. Even the moonlight seemed harsh and unforgiving, coming down like ice over the desolation, the ruins of Dale, the camps of Elves and Men.

And there was Nori, staring at the distant camps, bundled up from head-to-toe in his borrowed Laketown gear and looking absolutely miserable even from behind. His shoulders were up around his ears and his hair was already falling out of its elaborate peaks under his knit cap, even though he'd done it up just this morning.

Miserable or no, Nori was as observant as ever. He didn't so much as glance backwards before he was addressing Dwalin. “What brings you up here, Captain?”

 _Captain_. Nori had a way of lingering on his title that always set Dwalin himself shivering no matter how warm he was. It was only teasing, he reminded himself, and he stepped into Nori's eyeline. “Dinner. Bombur managed something hot—I didn't want you missing out.”

“Did he now?” Nori had already snatched up the bowl of almost-stew and curled himself around it, sniffing deeply. There was enough light to make out Nori's grimace once he placed the aroma. “Cram soup?”

Dwalin thought calling it “soup” was far too generous. “Might go over better with some of this,” he said, and handed off his father's flask, the one that had gone from Erebor to Ered Luin with Fundin, and now gone from Ered Luin to Erebor with Dwalin. “Bofur found a distillery with a few intact casks. Watered this down so two sips won't put you three sheets to the wind, but it should still warm you up.”

“Thank Mahal.”

Dwalin turned his eyes towards the camps, taking up Nori's watch while he enjoyed his meal out of the wind. The haft of Thekir's Ax was sinking slowly behind Ravenhill while sentries paced the perimeter of the Elven camp. Dwalin wondered if they could see the two Dwarves on the battlements, or if they were as blind as Men at night. He wondered where Bilbo was—still in the Elven camp? Or had he turned, heartbroken, back towards the kindly West and the comforts of his own little Hobbit hole? Dwalin wasn't sure which he wanted it to be.

Nori's heels clicked across the stones to Dwalin's right. Dwalin barely bit back a smile; Nori could walk silently in full-bodied shackles if he wanted, and once had, much to Dwalin's amazement. He'd purposefully surprised Dwalin by appearing at his side as if out of thin air a hundred times over, half a dozen times on the Quest alone, and accidentally surprised him on the Quest two dozen times. He had to decide to make noise when he moved, and every time he did Dwalin could hardly hold back the swell of affection in his breast.

Nori passed his flask and the bowl back to Dwalin and nodded. But Dwalin didn't turn back towards the fire in the Mountain, or wish Nori a good night. Instead he settled in more firmly, leaning his elbows against the wall of the battlements and taking a swig from his own flask. He could feel Nori's eyes on him, like the weight of the sun when his skin was almost burning, like a knife point pressed lightly beneath his ribs. Nori didn't speak, though, letting Dwalin find the words—or, more likely, trying to wait him out like a terrified opponent.

Mahal, but Dwalin wished he didn't have to do this. He wished things were different, wished he himself was different. He wished he could stay here drinking with Nori and they could speak like friends.

He took another sip, holding it in his mouth until his tongue felt numb, as if it would make what he had to say hurt less. He swallowed, held back a cough, fixed his eyes on the distant horizon and the torso of Oromë the Hunter peering above it, bow drawn back on some invisible beast. Dwalin had always liked the stars, even before the Dragon came and forced them on the road. He liked the stories about them, liked the way they changed, liked watching the sky at night and wondering. Sometimes he felt closer to the Valar under the open sky than he ever did deep in temples in a mountain, listening to priests talk of Mahal. Even now it brought him some comfort, enough strength to speak at last.

"Thorin has gone mad.”

Nori let out a long, hissing breath. “Never thought you'd admit it. Not out loud.”

“He nearly threw Bilbo off the battlements this morning.” Granted, Dwalin had half wanted to throttle their Burglar as well—but he'd made no move to do so, and Bilbo wasn't his One. “He would have, if Gandalf hadn't interfered. And I stood by and did nothing.”

“Oh, yes, and the rest of us were so useful when it came to trying to keep our Hobbit alive. Not one of us paralyzed by the realization that, oh wait, that's our king and he'd _completely lost his marbles_ over a particularly shiny rock.”

“The Arkenstone is not—” Dwalin cut himself off; now was not the time, and anyway Nori had a point. “I didn't come here to argue about this,” he said instead, at last turning to look at Nori, who seemed to have stopped shivering through sheer force of stubborn will and met his gaze with a hard one of his own. “I came here to ask if you have a plan.”

“Plan for what?”

“An escape plan.” Dwalin had to practically force the words out.

Nori's eyes grew wide and bright in the moonlight. His face and voice betrayed nothing further. “And what if I did?”

Dwalin glanced briefly back at the camps, checking nothing had snuck up on them or changed. The Elves still walked their predictable patrols, the Men still huddled in the ruins of Dale with only a few lonely sentinels watching over them. The night was so quiet. The only sounds were their own voices and sometimes the cry of the wind as it whipped around them, tugging at their clothes and beards. It felt so much like the quiet the night before Azanulbizar he wouldn't be able to sleep without memories clawing at him.

“I'm no diplomat,” Dwalin said, turning back to Nori. “That was always Balin. Maybe there's some way to resolve this whole mess without coming to blows over it. But I am an old soldier, and it feels too much like war and bloodshed is on the way. You're always planning, always thinking—please tell me you've got a plan of how to get out if the worst happens."

Nori was frowning now. “You...you want to run?” It might've been confusion in his voice, or well-disguised disgust. Either way, the tone set Dwalin's stomach to squirming.

“I want you to take Fili and Kili with you. If you can. I know you'll take your brothers with you if you've got half a chance, and I won't ask you to put the boys over your own family, but—There's an army on our doorstep and no other way out I can see. If anyone can get out safely it's you. And if you can keep the boys safe....” _Then the Line of Durin will live on. Then I can face Dís without shame when she joins me in the Halls of Waiting. Then the boys I dandled on my knee and spoiled with presents and taught how to swing a sword might get to have full, happy lives_. Dwalin left all the possible endings of that sentence unsaid.

Nori could bluff with the best of them, fake impassivity and calm in any situation. Dwalin, having known him so long, more than a century, could accurately guess about half the time whether or not he was lying. But Nori was never more distant when he was showing an expression or emotion which Dwalin could not even begin to understand. Right now it felt like he was halfway across Arda.

“And while I'm—spiriting the princes to safety or whatever—what will you be doing? Why not protect them yourself?”

Dwalin shook his head. “I am my father's son.” Everyone had always said as much. He had Fundin's looks, Fundin's height, Fundin's strength. He'd worshiped the ground his father walked on for decades, become a guard like his father, followed his king and cousin in the face of impossible odds like his father. 'Amad had once told him he even had his father's heart: Slow to love, but as inevitable as the tide when he did, and fierce as a forest fire. (She'd warned him against giving it away foolishly, but by then it was already too late.) And now his king and cousin was driven mad by gold lust, trying to reclaim an ancient homeland with an army waiting hardly two miles distant, and the night was reminding him of the night before Azanulbizar. How could this be anything but history repeating itself? How could Dwalin of all people stop it? “Thorin is my friend and shield-brother and king. I cannot leave him. I will lay down my life to protect him.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?” Nori was shouting, suddenly, eyes blazing, hands grabbing Dwalin's coat and clenching tightly as if to keep him from running off at this very moment and throwing himself on a blade for Thorin. “You said it yourself, he's mad. He nearly threw his One over a wall—this wall, right here, the one we've been standing next to for the last twenty minutes! There's an angry army out there and a bunch of pissed-off Men upset that our loony king went back on all his promises to them, and you're asking me to spirit off the princelings while you—you stay here and defend him? How long do you think you even have before he turns on you, too?”

“It doesn't matter,” Dwalin said, raising his own voice. “My life became his the moment I swore myself into his service as the Captain of the Royal Guard—”

“Bullshit!” Nori shook all over—or was he shivering again? “Bullshit! Any vow you made can't hold you, not when the Dwarf you made it to has gone round the bend—”

"It holds me if I still want it to.” Dwalin tentatively placed his hands on Nori's shoulders. “No matter what his madness drives him to, I won't abandon him when he needs me. And what greater need could there be?”

Nori collapsed inward—there was no other word for it. For a single moment his face was—wide—eyes large and luminescent, mouth hanging open, every line in his face smooth as stone along a fracture. Then his head bowed and he curled forward, into Dwalin's chest and Dwalin's coat, as if all the strength had gone out of him. His shoulders heaved once, twice, three times under Dwalin's hands before he realized Nori was sobbing.

“You'll die,” he cried out. One of his hands released Dwalin's coat to smack against Dwalin's chest, weak as a kitten. “You think you're your father's son? Think battle will come? It'll be Azanulbizar all over again. You'll die defending your stupid,  _stupid_ king, just like your father, and I'll be running away. Is that what you want? Is that what you want from me?”

Dwalin wrapped his arms around Nori as tight as he dared, pressed his face into his ridiculous, lovely hair, nearly black in the poor light. “You are a runner,” he said gently, sweeping one hand up and down the line of Nori's spine in what he hoped was a soothing manner. “You've always been a runner, as long as I've known you. You can get the boys out—you're the only one who can protect them. If me dying means you'll be safe and far away with the princes and your brothers—then yes, that's what I want.” Anything to keep Fili and Kili away from the bloodshed. Anything to keep  _Nori_ safe and sound. It used to hurt that Nori could and would run away from anything—including Dwalin and Dwalin's feelings—but if it kept him alive then what did it matter that Dwalin had loved Nori for decades and Nori would rather run himself out of town than so much as discuss it?

Nori shook and cried in Dwalin's arms for a long time. After a little while Dwalin started to hum an old Stiffbeard lullaby his mother used to sing to him, a silly one about Varda giving Mahal a pinch of leftover star-stuff to Mahal so he could craft the third Dwarf, Nipingr. Slowly the sobs grew quieter, and the shaking subsided, and Dwalin was holding Nori close and safe and warm and wishing this had come about for any other reason. His heart ached with each slow beat.

It felt like an Age had passed them by in perfect stillness before Nori spoke, mumbling into Dwalin's chest.

“What was that?”

Nori pulled back a few inches, enough for the wind to run its cold fingers between them, not enough for Dwalin to make anything of Nori's face out other than his nose brushing Dwalin's shirt. “Is that really all you see me as? Someone who runs away?”

“Someone who runs,” Dwalin corrects. “The first time we met you ran _towards_ me.” What a pair they'd made then, Dwalin a lanky awkward forty-year-old stumbling gracelessly through ball games while his mother shopped, Nori a twenty-year-old scamp racing away from his older brother, neither of them looking where they were going until they were already falling together. For years they'd kept on meeting each other near the markets of New Belegost, and Nori always seemed to be running towards Dwalin. He'd only started running  _away_ after the first time Dwalin noticed him stealing, after Azanulbizar. But he'd been running away ever since. “And I know that's not all of you, it's never been all of you. But it's been a part of you for a long time.”

Nori was quiet for a few long heartbeats. Dwalin wrapped the edges of his borrowed coat around Nori so he wouldn't freeze, bundling him up against his chest, and looked again to the horizon. Mahal below, but they were doing a rather horrible job at being on watch. Shabbathai, the Yellow Wanderer, hung sickly over the eastern ridge. It felt like an omen of ill tidings instead of a portend of luck.

“You don't have to be your father's son,” Nori said at last, and he kept on speaking right over Dwalin's sputtering. “No, shut up, you're right, I've been running all my life, and usually I'm running away. But what have I been doing since the Quest started? Running away from Orcs and goblins and bloody big spiders, sure—but I haven't—If I hadn't wanted to stay. If I'd wanted to say, screw your pardon, screw this Company, it's not worth it—well, I could've done it. Might've even managed to drag Ori with me. But I run away from people and I only hurt them, and Ori's always deserved better from me. So this was going to be the clean slate in more ways than one. When I signed up I said I wouldn't run from this.”

“You think you could've gotten past me?” It was meant as an honest question—the only reply Dwalin was capable of managing at the moment. He still was not sure what was going on or what he felt about it. All he knew was that Nori hadn't been so candid with him in years.

It made Nori chuckle, at least, and move so his chin was on Dwalin's chest and they were meeting each other's eyes again. Wrapped so closely together Dwalin could feel the laugh moving Nori's chest, strange and new and intimate. “Oh, you're _easy_. I've slipped out from under your nose before. It was the rest of the jumpy warriors I was worried about. That and Dori.”

“You could've taken him along,” Dwalin suggested. He was trying not to think about how well Nori fit in his arms, how he was holding the love of his life and Nori wasn't crying anymore and he wanted him so much.

“Not in this lifetime. Anyway. I could've run, but I haven't. You don't have to be just your father's son, is what I'm saying. You think he'd want you to live the same life he did and die defending a mad king on the doorstep of an abandoned kingdom?”

“What more can I do?”

Nori made a high keen of frustration and thumped his forehead into Dwalin's chest. “You stubborn ass. Maybe, if you're so determined the princes live, you could watch over them yourself and leave Oakenshield to his own devices? Because it doesn't matter if I  _could_ get them and my brothers and myself out of the Mountain. I'm not running again.” His hands tightened on Dwalin's shirt, his voice dropping too low to make out. But Dwalin thought he said, “Not if you're staying here.”

The words were a shock to the system—like plunging into an icy river without warning. The whole night seemed sharper, brighter; Dwalin could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears, was aware of every point of contact between them. He'd misheard, or Nori meant it differently, or any of a hundred more reasonable explanations, but still his stupid heart hoped.

He couldn't even stop his foolish tongue from asking, “You mean—you mean you'd stay for me?” That was the exact opposite of what he wanted; Nori could hold his own in a fight, but the thought of him anywhere near an open battlefield was something out of Dwalin's nightmares. But if he wanted to stay for Dwalin, maybe—maybe—

Nori stiffened, pulled away. His eyes studied Dwalin's face with the sort of concentration he'd given the locks in Thranduil's dungeons when he was trying to pick them. Probably all of Dwalin's foolish, foolish hope was visible, and the heart he shared with his father, maybe even the conflict between wanting Nori far away from here when violence broke out and wanting him to want to stay.

Nori's mouth drew into a flat line in his beard, and that was it, then, Dwalin's stupid feelings were ruining their friendship a second time, but then Nori was leaning up on his tiptoes and his lips were pressing into Dwalin's.

It was a brief kiss—hardly a kiss—Nori was too short to reach Dwalin's mouth properly without Dwalin leaning down to meet him, and Dwalin was too stunned to turn his head, much less return it. It hit him like a hammer blow, left his ears ringing, and Nori was pulling further away—drawing into himself, stepping out of Dwalin's arms, and—no.

Dwalin surged forward—leaned down—pressed his lips into Nori's. He held them there for a breathless, motionless second before he drew away, let his arms reluctantly fall.

Nori's eyes were wide and his breathing coming fast, and he was looking at Dwalin like—Dwalin didn't know. Maybe it was wonder, with a little bit of love. Dwalin hoped there was love in that look. He himself probably didn't look any better, probably looked ridiculous, but it didn't matter.

Nori had kissed him.

He didn't care that it was hardly a kiss. Nori had kissed him. Nori had said he wasn't running away any more. Nori must care for him, even if it was only a little, even if it wasn't the same way Dwalin loved him. He could drop dead at this moment and go peacefully with that knowledge.

Nori shivered, and Dwalin was abruptly recalled to the rest of the world around them—the cold, the impending bloodshed, the watch Nori at least was supposed to be keeping. He broke off from staring at Nori to shrug off his coat and wrap it delicately around Nori's shoulders.

Of course Nori tried to stop him. “It's cold out, I can't take your coat,” he protested, shying away from Dwalin's hands.

“Please,” Dwalin started, and there would have been more, he would've said something about how Nori always seemed to feel the cold more than any other Dwarf Dwalin knew, or how Dwalin would leave him to his watch as soon as he could muster up the strength of will to leave. But Nori was already sighing and giving in, curling up in the coat and watching Dwalin with something Dwalin thought might be fondness. He hoped it was fondness. For once maybe he wasn't wrong to hope where Nori was concerned.

This time, when Nori leaned forward and upward, Dwalin leaned down to meet him. And when their lips touched the stars aligned.

(In the morning, when the Orcs came, Nori ran towards them, and Dwalin kept close by the princes the whole time. He did not die defending the Line of Durin, and neither did Nori.)

**Author's Note:**

> (And then because Dwalin is defending them Fili and Kili survive the BofA and everything's fine!)


End file.
